The Irish Republican Army planned to kill Prince Charles and his new bride Princess Diana at a rock concert in 1983, but the plot failed when an informer betrayed the IRA, the New York Times reported Friday.
Former IRA operative Sean O'Callaghan - who was also an informer for the Irish police special branch and British intelligence - told the Times he was ordered to kill the royal couple at a London concert.O'Callaghan said after discovering the Prince and Princess of Wales would attend a Duran Duran concert on July 20, 1983, he was sent to London and given delayed timing detonators and 25 pounds of a powerful mining explosive called Frangex gelignite.
He checked out the theater and found a spot in the wall of a bathroom near the royal box where the bomb would fit. He also learned the time when cleaning women opened the restroom, giving him the two hours he needed to plant the bomb.
"It would have worked, it had a high chance of success," O'Cal-laghan was quoted as saying in an interview in London.
The assassination plan failed, among other reasons, when O'Cal-laghan betrayed the IRA. Just three years earlier the IRA had killed Earl Mountbatten, Prince Charles' uncle.
As the date for the concert got closer, O'Callaghan told his Irish police handlers and British MI5 officials that he needed a way to sabotage the effort without com-pro-mising his cover.
Under the plan, Scotland Yard leaked a story to London newspapers that O'Callaghan was wanted in connection with a plot to kill a member of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government.
The Times said O'Callaghan had already slipped out of England for France when the stories appeared and it was too late to find a substitute bomber to assassinate the royal couple, who were divorced this year.
In 1988, O'Callaghan turned himself in to British authorities and pleaded guilty to 42 crimes. He was released from prison Dec. 6 under what the Times said was a rarely used procedure requiring the approval of the Queen.
The Times said O'Callaghan had helped jail about 50 IRA operatives and confiscated millions of dollars of arms.